Juvenile fiction

Departure Time

A run-down hotel on a bare plain: the only hiding place for a girl in the rain. Once inside, a fox offers her a chair. A suspicious rat behaves as if they have already met. But the girl can't remember a thing, not even her own name... At the hotel she finds more questions than answers. She hears piano music, but can't find the piano. And what about the scraps of paper flying around the plain? While she tries to piece them together, the fragments in her mind start to come together as well. And then she remembers the question she really wants answered.

Departure Time is an amazing journey of a girl, in two stories. There is the girl in the hotel with the fox and the rat. And there is the girl with a father who is always away travelling and who suggests that they write a story together, one about talking animals. But she doesn't want to, and she's cross with him, because, yet again, he can't get back for her birthday in time. The two stories slowly start to intertwine and come together in a surprising ending.